Can There Be an Islamic Democracy?

Review Essay

by David Bukay
Middle East Quarterly
Spring 2007

Are Islam and democracy compatible? A large literature has developed

arguing that Islam has all the ingredients of modern state and society. Many
Muslim intellectuals seek to prove that Islam enshrines democratic values. But
rather than lead the debate, they often follow it, peppering their own analyses
with references to Western scholars who, casting aside traditional Orientalism for
the theories of the late literary theorist and polemicist Edward Said, twist
evidence to fit their theories. Why such efforts? For Western scholars, the answer
lies both in politics and the often lucrative desire to please a wider Middle East
audience. For Islamists, though, the motivation is to remove suspicion about the
nature and goals of Islamic movements such as the Muslim Brotherhood and,
perhaps, even Hezbollah.

Western Apologia

Some Western researchers support the Islamist claim that parliamentary

democracy and representative elections are not only compatible with Islamic law,
but that Islam actually encourages democracy. They do this in one of two ways:
either they twist definitions to make them fit the apparatuses of Islamic
government—terms such as democracy become relative—or they bend the reality
of life in Muslim countries to fit their theories.

Among the best known advocates of the idea that Islam both is compatible
and encourages democracy is John L. Esposito, founding director of the Alwaleed
bin Talal Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding at Georgetown University
and the author or editor of more than thirty books about Islam and Islamist
movements. Esposito and his various co-authors build their arguments upon
tendentious assumptions and platitudes such as "democracy has many and varied
meanings;"[1] "every culture will mold an independent model of democratic
government;"[2] and "there can develop a religious democracy."[3]

He argues that "Islamic movements have internalized the democratic

discourse through the concepts of shura [consultation], ijma' [consensus], and
ijtihad [independent interpretive judgment]"[4] and concludes that democracy
already exists in the Muslim world, "whether the word democracy is used or
not."[5]

If Esposito's arguments are true, then why is democracy not readily

apparent in the Middle East? Freedom House regularly ranks Arab countries as
among the least democratic anywhere.[6] Esposito adopts Said's belief that
Western scholarship and standards are inherently biased and lambastes both
scholars who pass such judgments without experience with Islamic
movements[7] and those who have a "secular bias" toward Islam.[8]

For example, in Islam and Democracy,[9] Esposito and co-author John Voll,
associate director of the Prince Alwaleed Center, question Western attempts to
monopolize the definition of democracy and suggest the very concept shifts
meanings over time and place. They argue that every culture can mold an
independent model of democratic government, which may or may not correlate to
the Western liberal idea.[10]
 Only after eviscerating the meaning of democracy as the concept developed
and derived from Plato and Aristotle in ancient Greece through Thomas Jefferson
and James Madison in eighteenth century America, can Esposito and his fellow
travelers advance theories of the compatibility of Islamism and democracy.

While Esposito's arguments may be popular within the Middle East Studies
Association, democracy theorists tend to dismiss such relativism. Larry Diamond,
co-editor of the Journal of Democracy, and Leonardo Morlino, a specialist in
comparative politics at the University of Florence, ascribe seven features to any
democracy: individual freedoms and civil liberties; rule of the law; sovereignty
resting upon the people; equality of all citizens before the law; vertical and
horizontal accountability for government officials; transparency of the ruling
systems to the demands of the citizens; and equality of opportunity for
citizens.[11] This approach is important, since it emphasizes civil liberties,
human rights and freedoms, instead of over-reliance on elections and the formal
institutions of the state.[12]

Esposito ignores this basic foundation of democracy and instead draws

inspiration from men such as Indian philosopher Muhammad Iqbal (1877-1938),
Sudanese religious leader Hasan al-Turabi (1932-), Iranian sociologist Ali
Shariati (1933-77), and former Iranian president Muhammad Khatami (1943-),
who argue that Islam provides a framework for combining democracy with
spirituality to remedy the alleged spiritual vacuum in Western democracies.[13]
They endorse Khatami's view that democracies need not follow a formula and can
function not only in a liberal system but also in socialist or religious systems;
they adopt the important twentieth century Indian (and, later, Pakistani) exegete
Abu al-A'la al-Mawdudi's concept of a "theo-democracy,"[14] in which three
principles: tawhid (unity of God), risala (prophethood) and khilafa (caliphate)
underlie the Islamic political system.[15]

But Mawdudi argues that any Islamic polity has to accept the supremacy of
Islamic law over all aspects of political and religious life[16]—hardly a
democratic concept, given that Islamic law does not provide for equality of all
citizens under the law regardless of religion and gender. Such a formulation also
denies citizens a basic right to decide their laws, a fundamental concept of
democracy. Although he uses the phrase theo-democracy to suggest that Islam
encompassed some democratic principles, Mawdudi himself asserted Islamic
democracy to be a self-contradiction: the sovereignty of God and sovereignty of
the people are mutually exclusive. An Islamic democracy would be the antithesis
of secular Western democracy.[17]

Esposito and Voll respond by saying that Mawdudi and his contemporaries
did not so much reject democracy as frame it under the concept of God's unity.
Theo-democracy need not mean a dictatorship of state, they argue, but rather
could include joint sovereignty by all Muslims, including ordinary citizens.[18]
Esposito goes even further, arguing that Mawdudi's Islamist system could be
democratic even if it eschews popular sovereignty, so long as it permits
consultative assemblies subordinate to Islamic law.[19]

While Esposito and Voll argue that Islamic democracy rests upon concepts
of consultation (shura), consensus (ijma'), and independent interpretive
judgment (ijtihad), other Muslim exegetes add hakmiya (sovereignty).[20] To
support such a conception of Islamic democracy, Esposito and Voll rely on
Muhammad Hamidullah (1908-2002), an Indian Sufi scholar of Islam and
international law; Ayatollah Baqir as-Sadr (1935-80), an Iraqi Shi'ite cleric;
Muhammad Iqbal (1877-1938), an Indian Muslim poet, philosopher and
politician; Khurshid Ahmad, a vice president of the Jama'at-e-Islami of Pakistan;
and Taha al-Alwani, an Iraqi scholar of Islamic jurisprudence.[21] The inclusion
of Alwani underscores the fallacy of Esposito's theories. In 2003, the FBI
identified Alwani as an unindicted co-conspirator in a trial of suspected
Palestinian Islamic Jihad leaders and financiers.[22]

Just as Esposito eviscerates the meaning of democracy to enable his thesis,

so, too, does he twist Islamic concepts. Shura is an advisory council, not a
participatory one. It is a legacy of tribalism, not sovereignty.[23] Nor does ijma'
express the consensus of the community at large but rather only the elders and
established leaders.[24] As for independent judgment, many Sunni scholars
deem ijtihad closed in the eleventh century.[25]

Amplifying Esposito

Esposito's arguments have not only permeated the Middle Eastern studies
academic community but also gained traction with public intellectuals through
books written by journalists and policy practitioners.

In both journal articles and book length works as well as in underlying

assumptions within her reporting, former Los Angeles Times and current
Washington Post diplomatic correspondent Robin Wright argues that Islamism
could transform into more democratic forms. In 2000, for example, she argued in
The Last Great Revolution that a profound transformation was underway in Iran
in which pragmatism replaced revolutionary values, arrogance had given way to
realism, and the "government of God" was ceding to secular statecraft.[26] Far
from becoming more democratic, though, the supreme leader and Revolutionary
Guards consolidated control; freedoms remain elusive, political prisoners
incarcerated, and democracy imaginary.

Underlying Wright's work is the idea that neither Islam nor Muslim culture
is a major obstacle to political modernity. She accepts both the Esposito school's
arguments that shura, ijma', and ijtihad form a basis on which to make Islam
compatible with political pluralism.[27] She shares John Voll's belief that Islam is
an integral part of the modern world,[28] and she says the central drama of
reform is the attempt to reconcile Islam and modernity by creating a worldview
compatible with both.[29]

In her article "Islam and Liberal Democracy," she profiles two prominent
Islamist thinkers, Rachid al-Ghannouchi, the exiled leader of Tunisia's Hizb al-
Nahda (Renaissance Party), and Iranian philosopher and analytical chemist
Abdul-Karim Soroush. While she argues that their ideas represent a realistic
confluence of Islam and democracy,[30] she neither defines democracy nor
treats her cases studies with a dispassionate eye. Ghannouchi uses democratic
terms without accepting them let alone understanding their meaning. He remains
not a modernist but an unapologetic Islamist.

Wright ignores that Soroush led the purge of liberal intellectuals from
Iranian universities in the wake of the Islamic Revolution.[31] While Soroush
spoke of civil rights and tolerance, he applied such privileges only to those
subscribing to Islamic democracy.[32] He also argued that although Islam means
"submission," there is no contradiction to the freedoms inherent in democracy.
Islam and democracy are not only compatible but their association inevitable. In
a Muslim society, one without the other is imperfect. He argues that the will of
the majority shapes the ideal Islamic state.[33] But, in practice, this does not
occur. As in Iran, many Islamists constrain democratic processes and crush civil
society. Those with guns, not numbers, shape the state. Among Arab-Islamic
states, there are only authoritarian regimes and patrimonial leadership; the jury
is still out on whether Iraq can be a stable exception. Soroush, however,
contradicts himself: Although Islam should be an open religion, it must retain its
essence. His argument that Islamic law is expandable would be considered
blasphemous by many contemporaries who argue that certain principles within
Islamic law are immutable. Upon falling out of favor with revolutionary
authorities in Iran, he fled to the West. Sometimes, academics only face the
fallacy of what sounds plausible in the ivy tower when events force them to face
reality.

What Ghannouchi and Soroush have in common, and what remains true
with any number of other Islamist officials, is that, regardless of rhetoric, they do
not wish to reconcile Islam and modernity but to change the political order. It is
easier to adopt the rhetoric of democracy than its principles.

While time has proven Wright wrong, the persistence of Esposito exegetes
remains. Every few years, a new face emerges to revive old arguments. The most
recent addition is Noah Feldman, a frequent media commentator and Arabic-
speaking law professor at Harvard University. In 2003, Feldman published After
Jihad: America and the Struggle for Islamic Democracy, which explores the
prospects for democracy in the Islamic world.[34] His thesis rehashes Esposito's
1992 book The Islamic Threat: Myth or Reality?[35] and the 1996 Esposito-Voll
collaboration Islam and Democracy.[36] Even after the 9-11 terrorist attacks,
Feldman argues that the age of violent jihad is past, and Islamism is evolving in
new, more peaceful, and democratic directions.[37] Included in Feldman's list of
Islamic democrats[38] is Yusuf al-Qaradawi, an Islamist theoretician who has
endorsed suicide bombing and the murder of homosexuals.[39]

While most academic debates do not exit the classroom, the debate over
the compatibility of Islam and democracy affects policy. Feldman pushes the
conclusion that the Islamist threat is illusionary. Accordingly, he argues that
Islamist movements should have a chance to govern.[40] Feldman concludes
with the prescription that U.S. policymakers should adopt an inclusive attitude
toward political Islam. "An established religion that does not coerce religious
belief and that treats religious minorities as equals may be perfectly compatible
with democracy," he explained in a September 2003 interview.[41]

Shireen Hunter, a former Iranian diplomat who now directs the Islam
program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, also repackages
Esposito's general arguments in her book, The Future of Islam and the West:
Clash of Civilizations or Peaceful Coexistence?,[42] and, more recently, in
Modernization, Democracy, and Islam,[43] her edited collection with Huma Malik,
the assistant director of Esposito's Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal Center for Muslim-
Christian Understanding at Georgetown University. Both books deny the Islamist
threat and try to reconcile Islamic teachings with Western values. She seeks to
counter Samuel Huntington's Clash of Civilization[44] and gives an assessment of
the relative role of both conflictual and cooperate factors of Muslim-Western
relations. She argues that the fusion of the spiritual and the temporal in Islam is
no greater than in other religions. Therefore, the slower pace of democratization
in Muslim countries cannot be attributed to Islam itself. Although Hunter
acknowledges that Muslim countries have a poor record of modernization and
democracy, she blames external factors such as colonialism and the international
economic system.[45]
 Other scholars take obsequiousness to new levels. Anna Jordan, who gives
no information about her expertise but is widely published on Islamist Internet
sites, argues[46] that the Qur'an supports the principles of Western democracy
as they are defined by William Ebenstein and Edwin Fogelman, two professors of
political science who focus on the ideas and ideologies that define
democracy.[47] By utilizing various Qur'anic verses,[48] Jordan finds that the
Islamic holy book supports rational empiricism and individual rights, rejects the
state as the ultimate authority, promotes the freedom to associate with any
religious group, accepts the idea that the state is subordinate to law, and accepts
due process and basic equality.

Most of her citations, though, do not support her conclusions and, in some
cases, suggest the opposite. Rather than support the idea of "rational
empiricism," for example, Sura 17:36 mandates complete submission to the
authority of God. Other citations are irrelevant in context and substance to her
arguments. Her assertion that the Qur'an assures the "basic equality of all human
beings" rests upon verses commanding equality among Muslims and Muslims
only, plus a verse warning against schisms among Muslims.

Gudrun Kramer, chair of the Institute of Islamic Studies at the Free

University in Berlin, also accepts the Esposito thesis. She writes that the central
stream in Islam "has come to accept crucial elements of political democracy:
pluralism, political participation, governmental accountability, the rule of law,
and the protection of human rights." In her opinion, the Muslim approach to
human rights and freedom is more advanced than many Westerners
acknowledge.[49]

Islamist Rejection of Esposito's Theory

Ironically, while Western scholars perform intellectual somersaults to

demonstrate the compatibility of Islam and democracy, prominent Muslim
scholars argue democracy to be incompatible with their religion. They base their
conclusion on two foundations: first, the conviction that Islamic law regulates the
believer's activities in every area of life, and second, that the Muslim society of
believers will attain all its goals only if the believers walk in the path of God.[50]
In addition, some Muslim scholars further reject anything that does not have its
origins in the Qur'an.[51]

Hasan al-Banna (1906-49), the founder of the Muslim Brotherhood,[52]

sought to purge Western influences. He taught that Islam was the only solution
and that democracy amounted to infidelity to Islam.[53] Sayyid Qutb (1906-66),
the leading theoretician of the Muslim Brotherhood, objected to the idea of
popular sovereignty altogether. He believed that the Islamic state must be based
upon the Qur'an, which he argued provided a complete and moral system in need
of no further legislation.[54] Consultation—in the traditional Islamic sense rather
than in the manner of Esposito's extrapolations—was sufficient.

Mawdudi, while used by Esposito, argued that Islam was the antithesis of
any secular Western democracy that based sovereignty upon the people[55] and
rejected the basics of Western democracy.[56] More recent Islamists such as
Qaradawi argue that democracy must be subordinate to the acceptance of God as
the basis of sovereignty. Democratic elections are therefore heresy, and since
religion makes law, there is no need for legislative bodies.[57] Outlining his plans
to establish an Islamic state in Indonesia, Abu Bakar Bashir, a Muslim cleric and
the leader of the Indonesian Mujahideen Council, attacked democracy and the
West and called on Muslims to wage jihad against the ruling regimes in the
Muslim world. "It is not democracy that we want, but Allah-cracy," he
explained.[58]

Nor does acceptance of basic Western structures imply democracy. Under

Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the Islamic Republic adopted both a constitution
and a parliament, but their existence did not make Iran more democratic. Indeed,
Khomeini continued to wield supreme power and formed a number of bodies—the
revolutionary foundations, for example—which remained above constitutional
law.

Is Islamic Democracy Possible?

The Islamic world is not ready to absorb the basic values of modernism and
democracy. Leadership remains the prerogative of the ruling elite. Arab and
Islamic leadership are patrimonial, coercive, and authoritarian. Such basic
principles as sovereignty, legitimacy, political participation and pluralism, and
those individual rights and freedoms inherent in democracy do not exist in a
system where Islam is the ultimate source of law.

The failure of democracies to take hold in Gaza and Iraq justify both the
1984 declaration by Samuel P. Huntington and the argument a decade later by
Gilles Kepel, a prominent French scholar and analyst of radical Islam, that Islamic
cultural traditions may prevent democratic development.[59]

Emeritus Princeton historian Bernard Lewis is also correct in explaining that

the term democracy is often misused. It has turned up in surprising places—the
Spain of General Franco, the Greece of the colonels, the Pakistan of the generals,
the Eastern Europe of the commissars—usually prefaced by some qualifying
adjective such as "guided," "basic," "organic," "popular," or the like, which
serves to dilute, deflect, or even reverse the meaning of the word.[60]

Islam may be compatible with democracy, but it depends on what is

understood as Islam. This is not universally agreed on and is based on a hope,
not on reality. Both Turkey and the West African country of Mali are democracies
even though the vast majority of their citizens are Muslim. But, the political Islam
espoused by the Muslim Brotherhood and other Islamists is incompatible with
liberal democracy.

Furthermore, if language has an impact on thinking, then the Middle East

will achieve democracy only slowly, if at all. In traditional Arabic, Persian, and
Turkish, there is no word for "citizen." Rather, older texts use cognates— in
Arabic, muwatin; in Turkish, vatandaslik; in Persian, sharunad— respectively,
closer in meaning to the English "compatriot" or "countryman." The Arabic and
Turkish come from watan, meaning "country." Muwatin, is a neologism and while
it suggests progress, the Western concept of freedom—understood as the ability
to participate in the formation, conduct, and lawful removal and replacement of
government—remains alien in much of the region.

Islamists themselves regard liberal democracy with contempt. They are

willing to accommodate it as an avenue to power but as an avenue that runs only
one way.[61] Hisham Sharabi (1927-2005), the influential Palestinian scholar
and political activist, has said that Islamic fundamentalism expresses mass
sentiment and belief as no nationalist or socialist (and we may add democratic)
ideology has been able to do up until now.[62]
 Conclusion

Why then are so many Western scholars keen to show the compatibility
between Islamism and democracy? The popularity of post-colonialism and post-
modernism within the academy inclines intellectuals to accommodate Islamism.
Political correctness inhibits many from addressing the negative phenomenon in
foreign cultures. It is considered laudable to prove the compatibility of Islam and
democracy; it is labeled "Islamophobic" or racist to suggest incompatibility or to
differentiate between positive and negative interpretations of Islam.

Many policymakers are also conflict-adverse. Islamists exploit the Western

cultural desire to accommodate while Western thinkers and policymakers attempt
to ameliorate differences by seeking to find common ground in definitions if not
reality.

Into the mix comes Islamist propaganda, portraying Islam as peace-loving,

embracing of civil rights and, even in its less tolerant forms, compatible with all
democratic values. The problem is that the free world ignores the possibility that
political Islam can threaten democracy not only in Middle Eastern societies but
also in the West. The legitimization of political Islam has lent democratic
respectability to an ideology and political system at odds with the basic tenets of
democracy.

Esposito's statement that "the United States must restrain its one-
dimensional attitude to democracy and recognize [that] the authentic roots of
democracy exist in Islam"[63] shows a basic ignorance of both democracy and
Islamist teachings. These conclusions are exacerbated when Esposito places
blame for the aggressiveness and terrorism of Islamic fundamentalism on the
West and on Said's "Orientalists." It is one thing to be wrong in the classroom,
but it can be far more dangerous when such wrong-headed theories begin to
affect policy.

David Bukay is a lecturer in the school of political science at the University

of Haifa.